World War I: The European Theater
W. T. Schnaufer. Album of the Great European War. Turkey Foot Lumber Company, 1914
The Album of the Great European War is a sort of guide book to the First World War published by the Turkey Foot Lumber Company in the beginning of the conflict. This album contained a map of Europe, a text describing the powers fighting in the war, and depictions of various military units along with fairly informative paragraphs on the history and service of certain military units.
This work was made and Turkey Foot Lumber Company, with W.T. Schnaufer as the company president. The Turkey Foot Lumber Company was based in Kentucky and as stated by its name, is a lumber company that manly markets wood products, making this work created fairly peculiar when considering the author.
This album created by a lumber company very accurately reflects the attitude and enthusiasm across the western world at the beginning of the Great War in 1914, many of whom still carried the more romantic and gung-ho ideas about warfare. This album appears to be trying to use the excitement and curiosity of the events in Europe and present them to an American audience, with information on the powers involved and some of their respective military units. Despite the various paragraphs on the history, strategy, and equipment of the participating and their units being actually quite descriptive and informative, one from a modern audience cannot help to feel that many of the units depicted were far too obsolete to fight in modern war. With more antiquated units like cavalry that still appear to belong in the Napoleonic or Victorian eras, and the infantry still not wearing proper helmets and bright colors, this album is an ironic reflection of the optimism and enthusiasm of the world before being plunged into four years of terrible fighting.
- Yujie Xiang
Tournassoud, Jean-Baptiste. La Guerre: 1914-1919. Lyon: Argence & Vidal, [1920?].
Jean-Baptiste Tournassoud was a member of the French Army in the early twentieth century. After completion of his conscription, Tournassoud decided to continue his military career as the head of Photographic Services (Getty).
Tournassoud’s photographs had a distinct ability to tell the stories of war without the need for any verbal support. The photographs above depict the story of warhorses in World War One. By inspecting these images from the left to right we can interpret the sequential different stages in the career of these natural born machines. The first image depicts the initiation to the battlefield, as new horses are brought to the frontlines by the dozen. As we move to the right, the newly established companionship between man and animal is depicted, as horses are assigned to their specified cavalry and initiated to the battlefield. Continue onward to the next image and the true brutality of the frontlines can be seen with two horses suffering from substantial gas burns. World War One was the initial introduction of gas warfare, and there were no restrictions on its use, and no living being was spared from is grotesque effects. The last image depicts the final stage of the experience for many warhorses: death. There is a strong juxtaposition between the first image and the last, as deceased horses are captured being carted out by the dozen. This cycle of life and death continued throughout the entirety of the war. As one horse would fall, yet another would rise to the challenges of the unrelenting battlefields of World War One.
- Finn McMurray